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Wealthy foreign patients are buying their way to the front of the line in some Ontario hospitals, say health groups urging the provincial government to ban “medical tourism.”

Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO), said the practice threatens the provincial system by setting a precedent for pocketbook health care and diverting resources that would otherwise be available to Ontario residents.

“These type of sharp policy deviations from what the public believes is the deal they have with government as taxpayers is an aberration,” Grinspun said Wednesday. “The hospitals do not belong to CEOs; the hospitals in fact do not belong to boards of hospitals, they belong to the people that fund the system and that’s the patients that use the system and those that may need the system tomorrow.”

Health Minister Eric Hoskins confirmed about 10 hospitals in the province are bringing in a few hundred patients a year from abroad for a profit in the “millions” of dollars.

The vast majority of these patients — 90% — are seen at Sick Kids Hospital and University Health Network in Toronto, he said.

“Not a single public dollar can be used to fund a hospital seeing or caring for an international patient,” Hoskins said. “Any revenue generated by international patients must be reinvested back into the Ontario health-care system to benefit Ontario patients. Most importantly, Ontarians need to and will always come first.”

Hospitals must open new beds and hire staff especially for the program, he said.

University Health Network earlier confirmed it treated 86 patients last year, the largest number people wounded in Libya’s civil war.

Grinspun said she’s aware of hospitals treating international patients needing bone marrow transplants, and also women from China having a second child.

Kelly Stadelbauer, executive director of the Association of Ontario Midwives, joined with RNAO, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Association of Ontario Health Centres in opposing “medical tourism.”

Midwives support humanitarian aid to those around the world in need, but hospitals are privatizing health care by setting up for-profit programs for wealthy patients, she said.

Sean Meagher, of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, said hospitals are actively soliciting these cash-paying international patients when they should be treating Ontario residents based on need, not income.

“No one should be able to jump ahead of a grandma from Kenora or a kid from Jane and Finch just because they have more income no matter where they live,” Meagher said.